2018 New York City Marathon Entrants By the Numbers

The 2018 running of the New York City Marathon isn’t slated to take place until Sunday, November 4. That’s almost 250 days away, and most of the race’s competitors haven’t even begun their training cycle for the 26.2-mile jaunt through the five boroughs. But that didn’t stop a myriad of marathon hopefuls on Wednesday from experiencing a surge of nerves sure to rival the morning-of, prerace jitters.

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That’s because by day’s end, members of the largest applicant pool in the race’s history knew whether or not they’d be among the more than 50,000 runners convening on Staten Island come Marathon Sunday. Here’s how the entry drawing breaks down, according to a press release from the New York Road Runners (NYRR):

105,184: The total number of applicants for the race’s free, non-guaranteed drawing. Last year, NYRR stopped charging to enter the drawing after settling a lawsuit against the former lottery selection process.

7 percent: The increase in the size of the applicant pool compared to last year’s drawing, which was 98,247.

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Related video: New York Road Runners President & CEO Michael Capiraso gives a tour of the group's new NYC RunCenter.

15,640: The number of runners who were accepted into the race through the non-guaranteed drawing. That means fewer than 15 percent of applicants gained entry this way. To put that in perspective, the NYC Marathon’s acceptance rate is lower than the acceptance rate at colleges like the University of Notre Dame and the University of Cal-Berkeley.

50,000: The approximate size of the entire field for the 2018 NYC Marathon, which leaves about 34,360 spots in the race available to runners seeking a guaranteed method of entry.

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9,000: The approximate number of charity slots expected to be given out for this year’s race. Last year, charity runners helped raise more than $36 million.

And regardless of how you get in—be it through drawing or fundraising—be sure to partake in the time-honored tradition of posting about your acceptance or rejection on social media. Here are some of our favorite reactions on Wednesday as runners awaited the news that they would running in NYC this November.

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